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Interviews with Female entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners, and industry Gurus. These podcasts speak with women (women-identified) across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game! Histories, current companies, and lessons learned are explored. The series is designed to investigate a female (female identified) perspective in what has largely been a male-dominated industry in the world to date.
Episodes
Thursday Jan 09, 2020
Interview with Abigail Jones: Co-Founder of Cairn Leadership
Thursday Jan 09, 2020
Thursday Jan 09, 2020
Interview with Abigail Jones: Co-Founder of Cairn Leadership. "Cairn Leadership harnesses the unique power of shared outdoor adventure to develop business leaders and their teams. Abigail drives Cairn Leadership's process to activate leader and team potential through team development, coaching, and retreats for organizations."
This podcast series is hosted by Patricia Kathleen and Wilde Agency Media. The series interviews women (& women-identified & non-binary) entrepreneurs, founders, and gurus across all industries to investigate those voices in business today. Both the platform and discussion are designed to further the global conversation in regards to the changing climate in entrepreneurial and founding roles.
TRANSCRIPTION
*Please note, this is an automated transcription please excuse any typos or errors
[00:00:07] Hi, my name is Patricia Kathleen, and this podcast series will contain interviews I conduct with female and female identified entrepreneurs, founders, co-founders, business owners and industry gurus. These podcasts speak with women and women, identified individuals across all industries in order to shed light for those just getting into the entrepreneurial game, as well as those deeply embedded within it histories, current companies and lessons learned are explored in the conversations I have with these insightful and talented powerhouses. The series is designed to investigate a female and female identified perspective in what has largely been a male dominated industry in the USA to date. I look forward to contributing to the national dialog about the long overdue change of women in American business arenas and in particular, entrepreneurial roles. You can contact me via my media company website Wild Dot Agency. That's why L DEA agents see for my personal website. Patricia Kathleen, dot com. Thanks for listening. Now let's start the conversation. [00:01:25][77.9]
[00:01:29] Hi, everyone, and welcome back. This is your host, Patricia. And today I am sitting down with Abigail Jones. Abigail is the co-founder and CEO of Care and Leadership. Welcome, Abigail. [00:01:39][9.9]
[00:01:41] Thank you. Thank you for having me. [00:01:42][1.4]
[00:01:42] Absolutely. I'm excited to kind of climb into what you're doing and what your company does for everyone listening. I'll read a quick bio on Abigail, but also tell you a roadmap for today's podcast. We're first going to look at Abigail's academic background and early professional life. Then we'll turn our attention to unpacking current leadership and the current endeavors within that logistics of who, what, when, where, why and how. And then we'll also look at kind of the ethos and the more philosophical structures behind the company. Then we'll look towards Abigail's goals that she has for Karen leadership and perhaps herself over the next few years. And we'll wrap everything up with advice that she may have. For those of you looking to get involved or kind of mirror some of her structural history, you can locate every more information regarding Karen leadership on their website. Karen, leadership dot com. That is c i r n d e r s epeat dot com. A quick bio on Abigail Karen leadership harnesses the unique power of shared outdoor adventure to develop business leaders and their teams. Abigail drives Karen Leadership's process to activate leader and team potential through team development, coaching and retreats for organizations. [00:02:55][72.8]
[00:02:57] So I like that. It's very tight and neat, Abigail. But first I want to get before we get into Karen leadership, I want to climb into your academic background and early professional life. So can you start us off with where you went to school? [00:03:11][13.9]
[00:03:12] Yes, I went to undergrad at UC San Diego right up the road and studied international sociology and linguistics and just fascinated by how people make sense of and understand the world and the capacity, the sort of range for how people live and make meaning and really how people develop and learn best. So near the end of my academic time there, I started taking classes in the Education Department and with a lab that was situated to do university and community partnerships called the Lab of Comparative Human Cognition. So it's really the sister science to cognitive science which was born. So it was this interdisciplinary academic. Playground for me to be able to develop skills where I had to definitely learn how to balance priorities when working with both the university and the community and develop programing in a multicultural setting down in southeast San Diego. So I was the Community Wellness Research Lead there for five years after I graduated. So that was a really good way to stay close to academia. I've always been really close wanting to know what's happening in the research and and turn around and be able to apply that and whatever work I'm doing to help people. And that's where I started off. And through that, I actually attended a mindfulness conference and I was doing some work with the community in southeast San Diego with yoga, social emotional literacy and healthy cooking and these sorts of things. But it was at this mindfulness conference that I learned improv as a tool to teach mindfulness, particularly loud group. Mindfulness is another way to sort of look at improv. And so that's where I got to taste that and then dove fully into improvizational comedy as a way to develop my skills as a facilitator and public speaker. [00:05:27][134.7]
[00:05:28] So that was an amazing pairing. I never think of improv when I think of mindfulness. I mean, the person who created that kind of pedagogical lenses is fascinating into the concept itself. [00:05:40][12.4]
[00:05:40] But how so? You brought that more into full fruition and started like endeavoring into improv. Did you do standup? Did you what did you do with that one? [00:05:50][9.3]
[00:05:50] Standup is distinctly different, right? That's a singular, more ego based, prepared line of work, whereas improv is necessarily group necessarily spontaneous and develops this kind of trust in your teammates. So I took workshops, started performing with a small group locally, not affiliated with any theaters, but I have a great teacher. And then we just broke off and continued to do improvizational work and small shows as just like a private group. And so that just grew. And from that I partnered with a fella up in North County who was doing consulting work for educational leaders at a higher level for a long time. So we developed Mindful Games for Leaders, a series of workshops that was based on teaching mindfulness through improvization and traditional, like contemplative practices based on the research. So they were affiliated with Stanford's Medical School Program on Mindful Research Awareness and up at UCLA, the programs associated with compassion, cultivation and that the brain research around that. So that was fun to be able to, again, stay close to the research and apply it to people in everyday life and just see what that same practice really flexing my facilitation on what it means to lead a group, REM and within now I'm getting I feel like I might have some limited understanding as well. [00:07:30][100.0]
[00:07:30] So you're going to have to bear with my naiveté. But with improv, I always think of comedy. [00:07:34][4.0]
[00:07:35] And so I think that I feel like maybe your definition of improv is encompassing other things, or I am like misunderstanding because I'm wondering how you're putting action items behind, like the concept of mindful improvizational development within action, you know, within community. Can you point to specific examples of how that's kind of embodied so I can understand it? [00:07:59][24.4]
[00:08:02] Well, what's funny is it's true, right, what gets an audience to laugh is more of relatable actual things. And so one of the activities that I've done this year more than once is to use the disc assessment. That's a tool that older style, communication style and work style preferences. And so once you've taken that assessment, you can identify who you are and you break off into groups. We use roleplaying as a way for folks to make this short, somewhat improvizational role playing scenario of each other so that they can in this kind of way, like use hyperbole, use exaggeration, use this playful sort of in the moment raw and fun, really, to to exaggerate the qualities of their teammates and sort of name these general preferences and be able to then use them and apply at work. Knowing that Sally prefers she'd make deliberate information processed with charts and graphs and sort of things that are that are general and that can help you operate more efficiently as a team just knowing these patterns. [00:09:28][86.0]
[00:09:29] So is that to what end is is it to increase the dynamism and communication within teams, these kinds of tasks and team building and exercises? [00:09:40][10.6]
[00:09:40] Is that like is it to increase the productivity via communication within a group of people? [00:09:47][6.4]
[00:09:48] It is if it comes from professional development. What I love about improv, too, is it translates so much into the intangible capital of personal relationships that people can apply in their everyday lives. So building that sort of productivity efficiency ahli is that is the end game especially and the first conversations. [00:10:12][23.7]
[00:10:12] But what's so great about the work that we do and now as we'll get into taking that work outside, is that people are developing holistically. So they're engaged and they're having fun and they're recognizing the value of the skills they're building for their entire team of their relationships. [00:10:28][15.9]
[00:10:29] Because what are we other than our relationships are relational lives and how we choose to organize ourselves both at home and at work. So it's fun to be able to. [00:10:41][11.6]
[00:10:42] Tells make things OK, so you were at you did the lab of the human cognition and then it sounds like you went to one of their actual centers and for five years did more of the public implementation, which I think is arduous unto itself. [00:10:56][13.9]
[00:10:56] For people who don't know the intersection between where academia meets public utility and employment is so convoluted and sometimes can be the most congested. [00:11:07][10.8]
[00:11:08] And it's tragic because it's the I feel like it's the most necessary to where theory meets practice in every form. And academia is kind of famous for having these verbose theories that when they go to implementation, don't make a ton of sense. The entire field of computer programing to get a degree in computer science and computer programing, at least back in the OTS, was studying a whole bunch of theory that had nothing to do with the code you were going to write for the next 40 years. And so and that's like the impetus because it's such a prevalent field right now that I like to use for people and saying getting that utility out of academia is is crucial, but it's also really hard done. [00:11:47][39.0]
[00:11:48] And so it sounds like this lab that you were at, the was it the lab of human cognition, one of their cognition? [00:11:56][8.5]
[00:11:57] Yeah, OK. Yeah. And then you were doing that for five years. What happened with you after that? Did you take some of those lessons and form KARREN leadership or what was the kind of the birth of it? [00:12:07][10.4]
[00:12:09] Yeah, and the huge lesson there, too, is that qualitative research being able to take observation of a situation, of a space of the tools, activities and environments from almost an anthropological viewpoint and be able to observe the world and look at data points that are more in the field capacity. So that was a huge take away from that training as well. But I stayed close to 60 and personally and invested in giving back to the military. It's not coming from my family, but a later relationship has my heart and given back to the military. And so UCSD Rady School of Management offers a Veterans Ventures program for military service members to transition into entrepreneurship. And I was concurrently taking business management certificate program at UCSD, just interested in business, interested in staying close to academia, but also using the power of business and. To to drive change, really, and through that program, I started just with helping them develop the program from the ground up and seeing what that was needed for this accelerator type program through the years, they would have a full cohort and a spring cohort. And I it was the second year that that was happening. This was last year. Exactly. And they gave me rain to lead a multiday retreat that was professional and personal development for the fall cohort of twenty eighteen. So I put together a series of speakers. I got the venue and coaches to fly up to Reno, Nevada, and we had this retreat and it was actually I had been also working as an intern in the leadership development firm here in San Diego, which is a boutique offshoot that was a small team, mostly from the Center for Creative Leadership. So I got to see through the years some of that corporate training, the coaching, the and how a company like that grows from the ground up. And it was a great experience. I was grateful to learn from them. And we had some values that were distinctly different. And so that was an interesting point to realize that they didn't necessarily see professional and personal development in tandem and the value that would happen in this holistic development kind of way. There was a lot of overlap between us, but I ended up leaving that small boutique company. I've got my wilderness first responder training to do some more corporate retreats, just consulting sort of work. It seems random. [00:15:02][172.6]
[00:15:03] Have you always been a wilderness person? The wilderness? [00:15:05][2.6]
[00:15:07] They are. But I was I was sort of I got consulting work throughout the years in leadership development because of my facilitation in the corporate world. And they just happened to have like semi outdoor venues and be working at camping retreats. And they suggested that I get a wilderness first responder training. And I, I, I acknowledge the power of being able to have that first aid, have that like caring for people. [00:15:37][29.6]
[00:15:37] And I'm not opposed to the outdoors. I snowboard, I surf, I like but I don't I didn't necessarily grow up that way. It's something I cultivated later in life. I just I have a craving for adventure for sure. [00:15:49][11.6]
[00:15:49] That's been the through line throughout. But I didn't necessarily think that that could be built into the company until I met my business partner night. So he I met him and I hired him for the retreat that I ran for UCSD Veterans Ventures program. And then he was already running this leadership development company that was using the outdoors to activate potential to build trust, to do all the things I was used to doing in a conference room used to doing in these very corporate settings with PowerPoint, these sorts of things. [00:16:21][32.4]
[00:16:22] And he was just taking it to the next level with that outdoor venue, essentially. [00:16:27][5.5]
[00:16:28] And so he is a national outdoor leadership school. Noles, have you heard of that company? [00:16:33][5.3]
[00:16:34] I have. Where did you guys meet? You hired him for this, but where did you find him so funny? [00:16:40][6.0]
[00:16:41] It's it's actually we my girlfriends were visiting from Minnesota where I grew up, and we took a Lyft ride from a restaurant down the street. And I talked to everyone. That is my I just am interested in people. I'm unconscionably curious. And so talking to our Lyft driver, I told him somehow by the bulk of what I was doing in the fact that I needed one more coach, one more person. And he was a fella who is in the San Diego Regional Chamber of Commerce. And he said, You mean if you just connected us so it's a live driver and basically talk to strangers and then the rest is history. We just started to after that after that retreat and seeing him work, we started to hike and climb and realize our values. And we created a flagship program for people to open and roll and be able to come on adventures with us. Sort of. Separate from their teams so that we could really get the ball rolling and create what we needed in the kind of way to it's like we want professional development that is not contrived, that is not based on these transactional situations, that's just going to be more fulfilled. So. [00:18:05][83.6]
[00:18:06] Right, OK, so let's climb into it. So it sounds like it was launched with you and Knight. When did you guys launch Karen Leadership? [00:18:14][8.8]
[00:18:16] He had started the company late in twenty eighteen, almost just right when we left. He'd come from the Naval Academy, launched the business and sort of built the structure of the business and was not was a singleton. And his wife was involved too. But she's also an orthopedic surgeon, so she's got her own fish to fry. And so he had built the structure of the business. And we officially partnered in April of last year of twenty nineteen. [00:18:46][30.5]
[00:18:48] And did you reach did you rename it or was it just being called Karen Leadership. [00:18:53][5.0]
[00:18:55] It was our knight named it Karen Leadership. [00:18:56][1.7]
[00:18:58] All right. And let's get to the name really quickly. Where did the name come from? [00:19:01][3.5]
[00:19:03] So tonight is trained as a mountaineer through Noles, and he's done countless backpacking mountaineering expeditions throughout his personal life, and it was with one particular expedition with his wife, Leanne, where they were on a glacier in Alaska and windblown zero visibility. And then in the process of looking for a name as a backdrop to the story, but saw the glimpse of these stacked rocks. And that is the universal sign that you are going the right way, that somebody has been here before and that you are on the path. And so that that visual of that stacked rocks is what Karen means. And for me, that also just resonates so strongly of it's just such a powerful symbol to. To to define leadership, and so it's it's a cool symbol to stand behind, I'm proud to do so, yeah. [00:20:11][68.2]
[00:20:11] Blocks being built on one another in all symbolic formats. I mean, in art history as well. Rock formations and rock towers have been built since the beginning of the beginning. And they've they've always stood for kind of a solidified strength and a signal of of unity and strength. So that does that does resonate with me as well. So the two founders, are you and Knight, is there anybody else who who's come on board or is just the two of you as far as the foundation goes? [00:20:40][29.0]
[00:20:41] Just so the foundation goes and then we'll bring on coaches, facilitators and guides on a contract basis as we need. [00:20:49][7.7]
[00:20:50] OK, so walk me through the structure a little bit, because it feels like if you're going to spend enough of the industry, you're going to have to call in as you're as you just said, you know, a lot of different special specific specialized coaches and people to do different things to, depending on who your client is, is kind of going to manicure what particular outdoor event you suggest for this. [00:21:15][25.0]
[00:21:16] Right. And even the activities within that event. [00:21:18][2.3]
[00:21:19] To a certain extent, and I have a pretty large capacity for what we eat, for the ground that we cover, so that's what's helpful is we are able to do a lot and the weather is mostly permitting here in San Diego. So that's also a huge help. But we have permits and insurance and gear for up to 20 people to take rock climbing out in Mission Gorge. And we can easily do that. He and I and similarily for hikes, we can do that for up to 50 people up in mission trails between the two of us. And then as far as kayaking stand up paddleboarding, that sort of thing will bring in and hire a company or a few expert guides to take on that kind of rain. But as we're developing more into our comprehensive leadership development programs for scaling companies, what we really are coming to is just hiring on coaches and making sure that we're on the same level to do that one on one work and then all coming together at these periodic times, six months, one year later to do these team development events. But we can we can pulsate pretty easily in terms of we are the foundational structure and have aligned coaching methodologies. And then we just deploy about one on one. We have meetings to make sure that we are consistent in our structure. And then we're able to you know, we've built we build these relationships over time and make sure we have the right people on board to to outsource the coaching. But the the guiding and the facilitation, we do that ourselves, too. So we're not coming in cold, hiring people, doing something we don't wouldn't do or couldn't do ourselves. So we have a pretty good read on it. [00:23:08][108.4]
[00:23:08] How long does it take you to write? Kind of a diet? You come, you have a client that comes in. I'm assuming you run some kind of a diagnostics as to what could benefit their company most with one of these excursions. [00:23:19][10.6]
[00:23:20] And then within that excursion, you're going to have I would imagine it's not just the hike or just the climb or just the Paderborn. It's these kinds of activities, this communication building activities that you did back with improvizational, mindful development of those types of things. How do you construct you have boiler plate mentalities where you can kind of just curate everything to the client's needs or do you start from scratch each and every time? [00:23:47][27.5]
[00:23:49] Yeah, I mean, there's it's a little bit of both. There is some custom design based on our discovery phase of the process, which we build in to the bid. But we we do have just plug in place solutions that sort of buckets of conversation. So if a team comes in and they just want one single team development event, we have a roadmap to say what are the skills you want to work on? What's the activity you want to do and where do you want to be? Just boom, boom, boom. It's so easy. One page sort of back and forth where we don't do that in depth discovery. But if you ideally want to be with us for comprehensive leadership development, for instance, or a scaling company that we just put this together is going to be a year long process. We'll do multiple team development events based on where you start and where you want to go. And then so there's more of that discovery phase. But we still have these buckets of categories of sort of where, depending on where the company is at, if they're more senior versus more brand new, fresh managers, fresh leaders who have never, you know, had to harness the power of a team and get everyone aligned. And on the same page, we can start from the beginning a little bit more. So it's a little bit of both. [00:25:09][79.9]
[00:25:10] Do you have any powerful, like stats or any ideas like how you pitch? Because I always having been around the block and back again twenty two times over, I'm always telling people you can never have your team to take, you know, even the most loquacious and best of friends. Team of five, you know, making a unicorn salary can still benefit from team building, I would say at least a bi yearly checkup. Every six months of getting out and doing some kind of an excursion or having another lens applied to your company always yield something. So, you know, this being Karen leadership's lens and things of that nature, what do you tell your clients when they approach or how you do guarantee them that it's going to lend information or knowledge, or do you provide them with tangible resources in the end? How does all of that work? [00:26:06][56.2]
[00:26:08] Yeah, I mean, as far as for the implementation process, they we give them a report based on where they're at now, that sort of diagnostic for where they're at with the actual it's hard to quantify necessarily the results of these relationship building skills, but we tend to I mean, there's really great research just on overall engagement and turnover and retention in these sorts of things. But we have the the testimonials speak pretty highly in terms of our clients and what they've gained. And so it's a lot of quality to feedback that we're getting. And we're figuring out measures on how to quantify the results of our programs. But it's if you're not investing in developing your people at this age of employee experience, where there's this expectation that people will feel appreciated and get that sense that their leaders are looking to actively develop their skills. And so we tend to get that. We tend to get leaders on board who are who know that they have to do the stay any kind of current, especially with this millennial leadership starting to emerge. So we haven't encountered too many of the nonbeliever's yet. There's there's a pretty strong group of scaling companies that already are on board with this. [00:27:39][91.0]
[00:27:39] But, yeah, absolutely. And the literature is there anyway from other aspects. I'm wondering, looking forward, just because you've come on board this year, you're headed it and we're now in twenty twenty, you're headed into your next year. [00:27:52][13.3]
[00:27:53] What are the goals that you personally have for yourself in dealing with current leadership and then the company? What does KARREN leadership aspire to over like let's say the next three to five years. [00:28:05][11.9]
[00:28:06] Yeah, we're excited actually. Just before the holidays we signed a contract with new CSC School of Management to teach there the same Veterans Ventures program through which I met. We are now running that accelerator program starting in February. And we have done we did work last year with UPS and we'll be doing so again this year at their convention in twenty twenty. So really what we're looking at is three or four core clients to do comprehensive leadership development, which we really want to build that relationship with the team and stay with as they're growing and scaling. So getting those core company alliances that we have and then we're building society to have these quarterly adventures mixed with leadership coaching where we are offering that rhythm for people to open and roll and do that leadership development on their own, regardless of their company. And so right now, that's rolling. We have quarterly trips planned for this year. And so making that internationally available and moving outside of Southern California is something we're already looking at for twenty, twenty one to move into, especially the Pacific Northwest, to have KRUX society chapters and other cities to have leadership realms that are in these different quadrants of the United States running these outdoor adventures mixed with leadership coaching to go on. [00:29:38][92.1]
[00:29:39] It sounds like with your international clients like ups and stuff like that, that'll be a natural transition as well. [00:29:44][5.5]
[00:29:44] It's going to have an easy momentum, a self momentum of its own, if you will, and think. Yeah. [00:29:51][6.2]
[00:29:52] All right, one more piece, but we don't we are just starting to unveil two is just this executive leadership retreat. These these sort of off the books, private expeditions that people are starting to hire us to do instead of going on, say, like an eight day Noles trip in Wyoming, which leaders can do to hire us for just weekend retreats or semi smaller retreats just for like high level executive teams, which we're already starting to see where we have one in March. [00:30:24][32.2]
[00:30:25] I can hardly believe it sold out and then is just scaling from there in terms of higher level leadership offerings that absolutely have sound like they would be a lot more applicable to smaller companies or things like that as well. [00:30:39][14.3]
[00:30:39] They can't take a full week off without kind of going under. You know, it sounds like your client base is going to be bigger. So if you were bumping into someone tomorrow, let's say another woman or female identified or non binary individual, and they asked you for your top three pieces of advice as far as getting into and launching their own kind of coaching or leadership coaching company. What are the top three pieces of things that you've kind of acquired over the past one to five years regarding this process that you could tell that person? [00:31:15][35.6]
[00:31:19] Definitely to ask questions, ask more questions and stay curious and in whatever role you're in and. [00:31:30][10.7]
[00:31:33] To. [00:31:33][0.0]
[00:31:37] Especially in that same sort of vein, challenge the assumptions about what is possible, so pushing boundaries and and I think that comes from this place of curiosity, but being bold in the kind of way that you take action from the answers that you get from those questions and knowing that there's more room likely to move than you think at first within the structure of even how you organize your day to the structure of where you sit in your company and what you could be doing. There's often more room than you think and. [00:32:14][37.3]
[00:32:17] I mean, I get outside is very cliche, but what I mean, I think by that our values are explore, connect and excel. [00:32:27][10.0]
[00:32:28] So moving beyond the boundaries is this explore piece connecting building bridges both with people and between disparate ideas like leadership in the outdoors. You wouldn't think they could go together, but what would a bridge between those ideas look like and then do absolutely everything with completeness, with full attention to detail and care, care about the way that you do the small things and it just translates up into the daily habitual quality of attention you cultivate. That's what gets you to be able to sort of. Between low level tasks and these high level, intense conversations is the care you take along the way in the process of taking care of yourself and your professional development at the same time. Does this care? Absolutely. [00:33:16][48.2]
[00:33:18] Those are awesome. I've got ask questions, take serious challenge assumptions. [00:33:21][3.5]
[00:33:22] There's more room to move and create than you would think and get outside, explore and then connect, develop all those things that you have. I like those three pieces. I think those are awesome. And they're much more philosophical than a lot of people come up with. So it's like another mantra unto itself. We're out of time today, Abigail, but I wanted to say thank you so much for all of your information and speaking with us today. [00:33:47][25.6]
[00:33:48] I know it's just after the new year and people are still kind of in recovery from all of those yummy treats and sweets and partying. And so thank you for talking with me. [00:33:56][8.6]
[00:33:57] Yes. Thank you so much for having me. [00:33:59][1.7]
[00:33:59] Absolutely. I'll circle back around. I love the newness of what you're doing. And I think in a year's time, it's going to be a grand experience, an adventure to kind of climb back over your last year. [00:34:12][12.5]
[00:34:12] So we'll try to circle back around next January and see where you're at. See if we can make some time for another quick interview with you. [00:34:19][6.9]
[00:34:20] Sounds good, looking forward to it. [00:34:22][1.7]
[00:34:22] Awesome. And to everyone listening, thank you so much for your time. And until we speak again. Remember to always bet on yourself, Slainte. [00:34:22][0.0]
[1979.6]
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